1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to information handling systems and in particular to a peripheral component interface (PCI) system and a method for expanding and controlling PCI nodes in an information handling system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continue to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal or other purposes, thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Peripheral component interconnect (PCI) is a local computer bus for attaching hardware devices in an information handling system. The PCI bus supports the functions found on a processor bus but in a standardized format that is independent of any particular processor's native bus. Devices connected to the PCI bus appear to a bus master to be connected directly to its own bus and are the devices are assigned addresses in the processor's address space. Attached devices can take either the form of an integrated circuit mounted to a motherboard or an expansion card that fits into a connector slot. Typical expansion cards include network cards, sound cards, modems, extra ports such as USB or serial, TV tuner cards and disk controllers. Co-processor cards are also commonly used as attached devices, and these co-processors may communicate with each other across the PCI bus and processors in certain applications. A PCI switch is sometimes used in a system design to better enable node to node communication between co-processors.
One problem with current information handling systems is that some applications can benefit from increasing the number of PCI devices, such as co-processors, so that the larger number of devices on a root complex can do greater bandwidth of application work. In a typical system design, the number of PCI devices cannot be increased beyond the number of dedicated device locations. Thus, the conventional implementation of an information handling system cannot have more than the original system design number of PCI devices.